Hello!

Hello! My name is Vidya and I will be joining The Modern Story Project as a Fellow in Hyderabad next month.  I can’t wait to meet all of the wonderful students at Vijayanagar Colony School and APRS. To those of you reading, I appreciate your allowing me to share this experience with you.

I grew up in Mobile – a city on the Gulf Coast bordered by Mississippi to the west and Florida to the south. The good news is that my upbringing in Alabama has prepared me well for Hyderabadi heat!  I have two sisters, and we remain close despite all moving out of state to attend universities scattered throughout the US. One sister is finishing up her medical residency in Philadelphia, while my oldest sister is expecting a baby boy any day now (I’ll meet my nephew a couple of weeks before I board my flight to Hyderabad).

After bravely weathering twelve months of summer for eighteen years, I fled to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island for college. There I experienced three more seasons of weather (Fall and spring were incredible. Winter I could do without).  While at Brown, I was a Development Studies major and began to develop an interest in education. Pursuant to this interest, I spent a summer in Mumbai working with an organization that promotes alternative models of learning for improving literacy.  Since graduating in 2007, I’ve worked at two different public health organizations in New York City and Boston. I’m constantly reminded of the connections between education and public health, and am interested in exploring these further while in India.       

While my mother grew up in Chennai, my father grew up around Hyderabad, making The Modern Story Project especially significant.  Growing up, the stories of my parents’ past seemed far away from our home in Alabama. As an Indian American, I was always fascinated by friends who grew up in the same city as their parents; unlike me, they intimately knew the buildings and roads where their parents were raised.  Although I know that the Hyderabad my father knew no longer exists, I am anxious to observe its changes, and contribute to closing the gap between Hi-Tech City and the rest of the region.      

I can’t wait to begin this project, and hope that you will continue to follow as we post updates!